We're delighted to announce that Caroline Bird and Jane Draycott have each won a Cholmondeley Award!

Awarded by the Society of Authors, the Cholmondeley Awards were established in 1966 to recognise poets' sustained excellence across a body of work and their overall contribution to poetry. The prize was judged by Moniza Alvi, Hannah Lowe, Drew Milne and Deryn Rees-Jones.

Read the full Cholmondeley Awards shortlist here. Congratulations to Caroline and Jane for this fantastic achievement!

Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in May.

Jane Draycott’s new collection The Kingdom follows seven earlier publications including The Occupant, Over (T S Eliot Prize shortlist), Prince Rupert’s Drop (Forward Prize shortlist), Storms Under the Skin (Henri Michaux translations), and her award-winning translation of the 14th-century Pearl. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.